The Cedar Tree

by Nicole Alexander

  Chapter 40

  Kirooma Station, 1948

  Stella found Joe in the library, his socked feet on a footstool, a glass of sherry at his elbow. A grazier enjoying the simple pleasures of success. He was reading; the pages turned towards the light. He lifted a leg, scratching absently at his thigh, and yawned. She watched him from behind one of the bi-fold doors, her arms wrapped about her body to ward off the chill air, feeling the heat of the fire he’d lit in the hearth. The scene was so comforting that it took her a moment to remind herself that the picture was at odds with the life she knew.

  She’d expected that his agreeing to her leaving at the conclusion of shearing would put a stop to any further attempts at civility, however over the subsequent months the opposite occurred. Joe ceased staying away for weeks on end and took to camping out only a couple of nights every seven days. He left early and returned late, as he had in their early years of marriage, his warmed meals consumed alone, but Stella knew that he was there at night. In another room. On the opposite side of the homestead. Sometimes she believed she could hear his breathing, along with the soft snore he made when he rolled from his left side onto the right. She would reach across the bed to the spot that remained cold.

  And now he was in the library. Behaving as if they were just like any married couple, leading a normal life. Only weeks ago she would have worried that Joe’s behaviour suggested that he was in denial about her intentions, that he still thought reconciliation possible and that when the time eventually came for her to leave, there would be a terrible scene.

  But now she carried a secret, one that would change everything.

  ‘What are you reading?’ she asked, selecting a book from the shelves and sitting in one of the twin armchairs, the table with its globe straddling their separate worlds.

  ‘Dickens. He goes on with some interminable descriptions.’ Joe closed the novel. ‘Would you rather listen to some music?’

  ‘No thanks. I’m used to the quiet.’ It was true. The frightening void of the years spent alone in the house had seeped into her. Sometimes she woke at night and moved through the old building, talking aloud to the memories of people who’d been there before. To the young woman, Hetty, whose letter Stella had found in the Bible. She had memorised the paragraph, for the words carried a poignancy that spoke to her own situation.

  I know you had to leave. I understand. But try as I may I can’t help thinking that if things had been different, had we not been who we are, that we might have been together. I look back now and see how strong you were, to leave of your own accord, when I should have been the stronger one and sent you away sooner. But you were right. There never would have been any peace for either of us if you’d stayed.

  Stella thought again of that last line. She wished she were tougher, more like the woman described in the letter. She’d been ready to escape, but now she wasn’t so sure.

  Joe buttoned an old tweed jacket tightly across his jumper.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ Stella asked.

  ‘In one of the wardrobes. Too good not to make use of. Keeps the wind out when I’m on the bike. Quite the part, eh? All I need is a coolabah tree and it’d be just like in the books. Me boiling my billy, camped out under the stars.’

  ‘Joe?’

  He’d risen to throw a piece of mulga on the fire. He adjusted the burning log, replaced the poker in the brass stand, and turned to face her. ‘What?’

  She couldn’t put it off any longer. He needed to be told.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Joe blinked. He wet his lips, as if buying time, clearly trying to decide how he should respond. ‘Really?’

  They spent a long time regarding each other across the room, trying to bridge a void that was almost impossible to cross. ‘It happened—’

  ‘I have a fair idea when it occurred,’ he interrupted, not unkindly. The corners of his mouth bent slightly upwards and he offered what in the past may have eventually become a smile.

  Stella refrained from saying anything else. Joe always fidgeted when he was bored by conversation, but she saw now that he was quite still. For the first time in years, her husband’s attention was centred on her and only her. It was as if Joe had been spun back to earth with a resounding thud.

  ‘Are you pleased?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘I’m not sure. Considering,’ she said. The discovery of the child had scared Stella. Still scared her. Not because of the baby, which lay safe inside her like a bird in a nest, but because of what it meant. She wanted the child, but not the situation: the hollow house, the hermit-like existence, the husband who was indifferent to her suffering.

  Joe moved from the fireplace, poured a glass of sherry and set it on the table beside her. Then, with his glass in hand, he walked about the room as if he were a gentleman taking a turn in his parlour. He swallowed the remains of the drink then poured another and returned to the fire, where he draped one arm along the mantelpiece and stared out the window into the night. The flames cast his features in partial shadow and she saw him washed by the undulations of the gibber plains, a mere silhouette of the man she once knew.

  ‘You’ll stay?’ he said finally. His free hand patted the mantelpiece, the fingers drumming a beat known only to him.

  Stella touched the mound growing in her body. A life within a life. It had taken time for her to accept the magnitude of her pregnancy. She wanted to shield her child from the anguish that filled her, and for some weeks after her bloods ceased she’d contemplated ways of emptying her womb. But how could she do it? Strangely, it was not because she was Catholic and opposed to abortion. Her faith was vital, but what stopped her was the thought of ending something that was already so very dear to her. Each precious movement made Stella whole again, optimistic, willing to withstand the unbearable. She might have considered leaving her husband, but she would never divorce him. And the child came first. It must come first.

  ‘Things will get better. Things are better. Maybe we both needed to blow off a little steam. Make each of us realise what the other needed,’ said Joe.

  Stella sipped at the sherry, wishing for a waspish retort that would wipe the growing satisfaction from Joe’s face.

  ‘We’ll have to get a girl to help in the house,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose,’ Stella responded cautiously. ‘Could we afford that?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said dismissively. ‘How long before . . .’

  ‘I drop?’ She used the terminology Joe employed when he was talking about a female animal ready to give birth. ‘About five months.’

  ‘Didn’t you write it in your diary? You put everything else in there,’ he said.

  Stella thought of that afternoon. ‘No.’

  ‘We can expect it around December, then,’ he concluded.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Christmas. Maybe once you have the baby you’ll feel more settled. More at home.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she replied.

  ‘I do care about you, Stella. I always have. Just not in the way that you expected. I’m sorry for that, for not being the person you wanted me to be, but you have to understand that I’m no different now from the person you met and fell in love with. That’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just the way it is.’

  ‘You don’t see it, Joe. You don’t understand,’ said Stella.

  Joe’s tufted eyebrow lifted slightly. ‘What don’t I understand?’

  ‘How much you love the land. That you’ll always love the land more than me. More than our child. It’s your life. Your grand obsession,’ said Stella. ‘It’s incredibly compelling, your devotion to the property—’

  ‘But—’

  ‘It’s also extraordinarily selfish.’

  Joe readjusted his position, rubbing his back along the edge of the mantelpiece like a beast of the field scratching an itch. It appeared a confident action, but it also spoke of an unsureness, as if by feigning disinterest he might conceal his concern of an uncertain outcome. ‘B
ut you’ll stay here with my baby?’

  ‘Our baby,’ Stella corrected, meeting his gaze with her own.

  ‘Our baby,’ he repeated, though with a flicker of annoyance.

  ‘I’ll never forgive you for bringing me out to this godforsaken place and abandoning me,’ said Stella.

  This time Joe’s half smile became full. ‘Everything will be better. You’ll see.’

  And for Joe, it was. He left the very next morning and stayed away for two weeks.

  Chapter 41

  The man Stella was supposed to marry was green-eyed, with honey-coloured hair. He came from a good, solid family and was the son of one of her father’s friends. There was talk of Tony Cosimo eventually taking over his father’s business, a restaurant in George Street. Their first meeting had been organised by both sets of parents, with the Cosimo family business selected as the chosen venue. Tony was to stand outside the restaurant clutching a rolled-up newspaper and Stella was to wear something red.

  It was a preposterous old-fashioned arrangement that Stella baulked at from the very beginning. Normal young people met their prospective partners at dinners or dances, not through parental vetting. But she was twenty-eight years of age and her parents were concerned that she’d never marry, so in the end she agreed to the introduction purely to appease them. On the designated day, at the appointed hour, twelve noon, she waited for Tony to appear. She stood on the opposite side of the street, not wanting to appear eager, especially because her decision was already made. Stella wasn’t going to allow her parents to dictate her life. However refusing them outright was not worth the continuing arguments and so she waited near a fruit kiosk, the red scarf still in her handbag.

  Eventually, a young man appeared from within the restaurant, dropping the newspaper he carried on the ground. He quickly retrieved it and then slouched against the window, lighting a cigarette. It was him. Tony. Stella observed him through the gaps in the passing traffic, this man that her parents thought was right for her. He smoked quickly, flicking the ash frequently. He was tall and well built like a swimmer, with wide shoulders and narrow hips. Through a break in the traffic he caught sight of her, his lingering interest plainly obvious. Stella’s cheeks reddened. The man was rolling the newspaper into a cone and staring directly at her, expectantly.

  Two men entered the restaurant, briefly greeting him as they passed. He laughed at what they said, his smile so wide it could have cracked the sky. Stella kept watching from across the street, unable to move. He was beautiful. Instinct screamed at her to dodge the cars and trucks and walk calmly towards him. She suddenly became aware of how long she’d been standing across the street, and fumbled in her handbag for the red scarf. Her wristwatch showed the time as ten minutes past the hour. The silk scarf was between her fingers.

  But it was too late. Tony threw the newspaper into a rubbish bin and moved to the kerb, lifting his hands as if to say, What’s wrong with you? Then he walked back into the restaurant.

  Stella spent the remainder of her lunch hour sitting on a bench, trying to convince herself that she’d made the right decision. After all, Tony hadn’t crossed the street either.

  Her parents were furious. Tony’s parents were astonished. His father insinuated that Stella thought herself too good for his eldest son and eventually arranged for a nice girl to come from Italy to marry his boy. There was much talk in Stella’s home about Australian culture, that life here had made her wayward and a disrespectful daughter. The incident played on Stella’s mind for many months. Almost two years to the day after that fateful lunch hour, she met Joe.

  The Kirooma house was pleasantly dark. Stella sat in the music room at the piano, a finger on middle C. Every time the baby kicked, she would strike the key, the noise of the out-of-tune piano echoing through the rooms, until the child finally stilled after a day of sudden moves. It was many years since she’d thought of Tony. So it was strange that after the passing of so much time that she found herself trying to justify her inaction that day. A moment of indecision led her away from Tony Cosimo and a split second of certainty drew her into Joe’s arms. It had been eating at her, how a person’s life could be so totally altered by one simple choice. There should be a handbook for living, she had concluded. Some instructive tome for leading a model life. For a long time she’d thought all she needed was the Bible, but now she wasn’t so sure. It was extraordinary for a whole species to be wandering the earth with no reliable markers to follow.

  Stella closed the piano lid. The later stages of the pregnancy had made her tired, the heat of summer adding to her irritability. The doctor in Broken Hill predicted a mid-to-late December delivery and the remaining days strung out before her. She waddled stiffly along the hall, moving through rooms grown familiar by her unwavering presence. She had become like the previous inhabitants, so ingrained in the timber dwelling that she was now part of the foundations. Her whispers merging with those that came before.

  She laid her hands on her belly. The baby was quiet. Stella felt the swell of love that had centred and guided her over the last few months. The child had banished the ache that once held fast and even softened the resentment that had stewed within her. She was now rapturously, gloriously in love with life, her renewed happiness so great that Joe’s presence mattered little anymore. Where once he had been her sole desire, his attraction so great she could imagine no other man’s arms about her, she now only wanted one thing. To be left alone with her baby.

  It was a little cooler in the garden and Stella walked around the house to the orchard, zigzagging through the trees, marvelling at the pale green of the sun-withered leaves as the night drew its cloak around her small world. When her heart beat a little faster she slowed, reaching for a nearby branch to steady herself. She smiled at the worry that inched its way into her mind, berating herself for being concerned about what was probably nothing. Then a queasiness came over her and pain struck, harsh and unrelenting.

  Stella fell to her knees, the branch snapping on the way down.

  She clawed at the soil and yelled out for Joe, willing her voice to carry across the dunes, devastated by the impossibility of ever being heard. She conjured up the pages in the kitchen diary, the day of his leaving and the long-past date of his expected return, the bitterness of his unreliability striking her cold. He’d promised he would only be gone for two weeks, but they were already entering the middle of the third. She couldn’t believe she’d trusted him.

  When the next contraction came, Stella knew she had to push. The child wanted to be born. She felt a gradual yielding from within. Her body was letting go, willing the little soul onwards and she massaged her stomach, cooing to her little dove to fly free, relishing the discomfort that announced the arrival of her baby. The contractions came and went, petering out and then returning to encircle her body, increasing with renewed pain. The ache grew unrelenting and with each surge, her exhaustion grew until her strength gave way.

  Stella opened her eyes to the stars as another contraction came from deep within her. She screamed in opposition to the tightening spasm, feeling the hard ground beneath her, and then the ache eased and she lay back to stare at the night sky. She had hoped for a sprint, but the birthing of her child was turning into a marathon. She concentrated on the sky as her rapid pulse slowed. Of all the books in the library, not one had concerned the matter of birthing. Not a single page on what a woman should do or expect. The collection was vast, however it occurred to her that not one of the hardbacks was written by a woman. Even in childbirth, she was at the whim of men.

  When the faintest light marked the start of another day, the child came into the world. Stella drew the baby up from between her thighs and held her close, cupping the fragile head. She stroked the fine hair and kissed the child’s lips and whispered the word that would bond them for life.

  ‘Daughter.’

  Slowly the air was warmed by the sun and the wind became sultry with heat. It rose upwards, drawing in the waiting atmosphere a
nd then rushed along the ground, showering her and the baby in dirt and yellowing leaves. It carried the accustomed scents of sheep and dung, of dry earth and the great spaces that lay in the interior. Stella clasped the baby to her chest, sensing change. She understood that she was forever transformed and that everything she did from this moment on would stem from the birth of her daughter.

  Her mind blurred. About her, the orange and lemon trees began to recede from view. They faded gradually until the change was so marked and the surroundings so altered that she lost all sense of where she was. She was aware of the earth beneath her, of the gritty wind and a harsh blue sky and yet she was moving towards another time and place.

  She crossed a glimmering salt lake, its vast alluvial layers laid down over millennia, her arms growing lighter, her body cooling, until she too bordered on evaporation.

  Chapter 42

  Joe was at Stella’s side in the bedroom, fanning her with a folded newspaper. ‘If we leave now we’ll be at the neighbours’ in four hours. There’s an airstrip there. I can call ahead and give the flying doctor the time we’ll arrive. You should see a doctor.’

  Stella glanced at the paper swishing back and forth and thought vaguely of Tony standing outside the Cosimos’ restaurant.

  ‘Why? There’s nothing anyone can do now.’

  She lay on the bed, barely registering the pain that striated her body like sedimentary deposits. In her mind, she was a desert wanderer, traversing dunes and gullies, shadeless plains and skies so dark that the chance of another breaking dawn seemed impossible. She had Joe’s glass jars in a bag on her shoulder and she unscrewed each one, spilling the meticulously gathered contents. She was bending down, squatting on her haunches, scooping salt into one of the containers.